Every year, governments spend over $9.5 trillion through contracts with companies to provide everything from pencils and paper to building infrastructure such as bridges, schools and hospitals. Every third dollar that your government spends is on public contracts. Contracting is plagued by opacity and inefficiency and is government’s number one corruption risk. Better, smarter and fairer government contracting will have a huge impact on people’s lives.

We need your big ideas to find better ways to manage, analyse, and monitor how government buys goods & services. The Open Contracting Partnership, in collaboration with the Open Data Institute and funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, invite you to participate in the Open Contracting Innovation Challenge.

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How would you use data to strengthen the integrity and effectiveness of public procurement?

We are looking for entrepreneurs, government innovators, data journalists, civic technologists, hackers, open data enthusiasts, citizen activists who understand the transformational impact on people’s lives that better public contracting can have in terms of scale and impact.
We are particularly interested in ideas for projects that:

Detect and prevent fraud & corruption

Create fairer competition

Deliver better value for money for governments

Drive effective goods & service delivery for citizens

Any idea is valid:

A tool that helps businesses compete on government contracts?

An investigative project that reveals inefficient use of government funds?

A Twitter bot that queries an open tender database?

A new way of connecting contracts to other relevant data?

Then think about how that project can achieve scale and reach in a trillion dollar marketplace.

So...

if you have a data-driven idea to improve the way governments buy goods and services in mind, gather your team and get going.

Entries open

18 April 2017

Submission deadline

2 June 2017

Six finalists announced

14 June 2017

• $5,000 per team
• Government innovation winner announced

Finalist meetup in London

28 June (tbc)

Incubation & mentoring

25 June -25 Sept 2017

Grand prize award

30 Sep 2017

• One team wins $30,000

What's in it for you?

Prize

Through the Open Contracting Innovation Challenge, we will award $60,000 in prize money and
the Government Innovation prize*.

If your application is shortlisted by our judges as one of six finalists,
you will receive a cash prize of
$5,000
to take your idea forward

• September 2017:
- One ‘Grand Prize’ - $30,000

After working on your project for three months with our experts, you will pitch for the
Grand Prize which could see you awarded
$30,000.

Mentoring during incubation

We are excited to get to know your ideas and see them become reality. As a finalist, you will receive mentoring over three months. Our experts in data and public contracting will help to ensure your tool, project or idea delivers significant quantifiable progress from June to September. The focus during those three months is on action and execution.

Recognition

We like to think that open contracting is an exciting space. The grand prize winner will be showcased at the Open Contracting 2017, our global meeting in November, and we’ll do what we can to ensure that it makes waves in the open data and open contracting communities.

Milestone 1: Call for applications

The Challenge will be open for entries from the 13th April 2017.
The entry period will be open for just over six weeks, closing on the 31st May, 23.59 EST. To enter,
participants must complete the following application form

Anyone interested in submitting a solution can read the Challenge Handbook for
more information about the process. We also recommend referencing the Eligibility
Criteria and Judging Criteria.

After the deadline, all entries will be assessed by our
judging panel against the criteria, and seven finalists will be announced on the
14th June 2017. These finalists
will include:

• Six ‘Citizen Prizes’, for
applications from businesses, individuals, academia, journalists, civil society and
more. Citizen prize winners receive $5,000,
as well as mentorship and expert advice, to develop their idea.

• One ‘Government Prize’ for
the best application from a government department or agency. The government
prize does not include a monetary award, but will receive mentorship and expert
advice to develop their idea.

Milestone 3: Concept Refinement

After the seven finalists are announced, they will have three
months to implement their idea, test solutions, and/or refine their prototypes and
write their Impact & Sustainability plans. During this period mentoring support
will be provided by experts in open contr. Deadline for the Development Plan
submission will be the 14th September 2017.

Milestone 4: Grand Winner Announced

In September 2017,
based on the Impact & Development Plans and the progress from the past three
months, the judging panel will evaluate the seven finalists and select:

• One ‘Grand Prize’ winner of
$30,000, who use the reward to
help advance their project. The grand winner will be announced on the 30th September 2017

MILESTONE 5: SHOWCASE EVENT

Both the Grand Prize winner and the finalist ideas and
concepts will be showcased at the Open Contracting Global Meeting in Amsterdam, in
front of a large audience of the public procurement and contracting network (November
2017 - date to be confirmed).

Our Government Innovation prize

We know there are champions and innovators in governments around the world – thousands of public servants quietly working away to improve the basic functions of government, trying to modernize and update citizen services. Whilst governments are not eligible for the cash prize, winners will receive mentoring and expert support to accelerate the progress and execution of their innovation.
We will also bring you to the center stage and celebrate your government innovation at Open Contracting 2017, our global meeting in November.

Our Judges

To ensure everyone is competing on a level playing field, our judging criteria are available to everyone right from the start. Here’s how our expert judges will evaluate your submission:

Potential for impact

Can you provide us with an explanation and evidence of how your idea will have a positive impact on society?

Innovation

Is your idea a substantive, new, or innovative contribution in the field?

Use of data

How central is the use of data to your proposition?

Sustainability

Can you demonstrate that your idea can sustain itself beyond the period of initial financial support, and/or can be reproduced in other contexts?

The Team

Does your team have the passion, skills and network to make your idea a reality?